They were inside the Lucian stronghold, one of the network of secret bases that the different branches of the family had built all over the world. From this base, the Lucian family had launched revolutions and counterrevolutions, run vast spy networks, controlled shadow industries, and laundered ill-gotten fortunes of immeasurable value.
Nellie and Sammy were definitely not supposed to be here.
They raced down a narrow corridor. Floor lights, like in the aisles of an airplane, guided them to a bank of elevators. Nellie had notes for the elevator code in her phone, too. She felt almost as if she were chasing Dan and Amy’s past as she entered in the proper numbers and the elevator door slid open. They whooshed down deeper into the Lucian stronghold. Sammy chewed his lip nervously as they descended. Nellie pointed at the elevator wall behind them.
“The kiddos told me they saw a giant portrait of the Kabra family on that wall when they snuck in here,” she said. “I guess the Lucians took it down.”
Sammy nodded. Nellie didn’t like how quiet he’d gotten. He must be terrified. She wasn’t exactly comfy herself, but she could’ve used some small talk to lighten the mood. Instead, she listened to the rumble of the descending elevator until they came to a stop and the doors opened onto another long hallway.
They both froze as two Lucians in lab coats disappeared around a far corner, lost in their own conversation.
When the coast was clear, Nellie checked her phone and led Sammy to another door, which opened into a large room covered with full-size portraits of famous Lucians from the past. Doors ringed the room, and she wasn’t sure which one to take.
Amy and Dan had gone to an office when they were here, but she was after some sort of archive or file storage. She walked the perimeter of the room, looking at the portraits. The nearest portrait was of Napoleon. When Nellie pushed open the door beside his portrait, she saw a long corridor lined with gun safes and yet more steel doors locked with digital keypads. So the portrait of Napoleon led to the armory, she guessed.
She moved to the door beside the portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, which seemed to lead to a network of laboratories.
And then she saw Ben Franklin, a famous Lucian with a long list of important accomplishments in politics, diplomacy, and science. He was also the founder of the Library Company of Philadelphia, a subscription library where members had access to thousands of important books and documents for research. His portrait seemed as likely as any other in the room to lead to an archive.
She pushed open the door. Motion-sensor-controlled lights clicked on as she stepped into a large room lined with rolling racks of files on floor-to-ceiling tracks.
“Well, where do we start?” Nellie wondered.
“I guess we look for O,” suggested Sammy. “For Outcast?”
Nellie shut the door behind them with a soft click. They’d need their privacy. They’d just sneaked into the secret Lucian archives and they might be there a while. If they were found by Lucian security, she and Sammy might never be heard from again.
There were so many files stored in the room that the shelves had to be pressed against each other on tracks. There was only room to access one row at a time. A computer terminal by the door controlled the rows to move them around as needed.
Nellie tapped a few keys and the screen showed a prompt to select her language. She chose English, then typed in the letter O.
There was a loud hydraulic hiss and the rows of shelves suddenly swung open like the pages of a book, each massive steel shelf slamming into the one in front of it with a bone-crunching thud as it flipped to the appropriate row. She could only imagine some unfortunate librarian accidentally crushed in between shelves.
When the shelves stopped moving, the screen asked her to engage the safety lock. She clicked YES. A loud snap echoed as a bar dropped to hold the open shelves in place.
She and Sammy stepped forward and began to look through the files. Even though they were in Moscow, the files were in English. The Lucians were an international organization and the Kabras had been their leaders for a long time. Nellie found herself actually grateful for Ian’s constant Britishisms, like lift for elevator and trousers for pants. The Kabras’ unapologetic Englishness was the only thing that made these archives readable for her.
She found a file header that said Outcasts and then saw beneath that header three rows of thick folders.
Sammy spoke aloud the thought that had seized Nellie’s mind.
“How many people did Grace throw out of the family?”
Nellie’s hand stopped moving midway through the files as she saw the letter H. She pulled back the end of a tab to read the full name on the bulging folder: Hartford, Nathaniel.
Grace’s husband. The one she’d cast out. The one Beatrice said she’d put a kill order on. Nellie’s heartbeat thudded in her ears. This was her chance. She could sneak a peek in this file and know for sure whether or not the terrible rumors were true.
Sammy had squatted down and was rifling through the rows of files at the bottom of the shelf. “I don’t even know what we’re looking for,” he said. “And why haven’t they digitized their files, anyway?”
“The Lucians are paranoid,” Nellie said. “And you can’t hack a room like this remotely. In order to steal information from paper files, you’d have to actually be in here and risk getting caught by Lucian security.”
“We know they torture prisoners,” Sammy said, swallowing. “So I’d like not to be in here any longer than necessary.” He looked up at her. “What do you have there?”
Nellie hadn’t even noticed that she’d pulled the Nathaniel Hartford file from the shelf. It felt heavy in her hands. The cover had a big TOP SECRET stamp across it. She handed it to Sammy.
“Oh,” he said, his face inscrutable.
“I just …” Nellie started. She didn’t know what she wanted with it. Did she want to know the truth about Grace Cahill? Could someone who had cast out so many people from the family have done even worse?
“Well, open it,” said Sammy. “We’re here. You might as well put your doubts to rest. If Grace ordered her own husband killed, Amy and Dan deserve to know, right? He was their grandfather. And if she didn’t, then you can stop wondering. Open it.”
Nellie nodded. She flipped open the first page of the file. There was a blurry black-and-white photo of a handsome man in a Burberry raincoat, his head down against a rainy day. The note identified him as Nathaniel Hartford, Ekat. Husband of Grace Cahill. Beside the photo a big red stamp read, simply:
This was the man whom Aunt Beatrice said her sister had married, had quarreled with, and had cast out of the Cahill family against his will. Her own husband. Could Grace really have been so cruel?
Nellie went to turn the page of the file when she heard something, a tapping, like typing on a keyboard. Sammy heard it, too. They froze.
Another keystroke.
Someone was in the room. Someone was typing.
Nellie took a wary step forward toward the end of the row to see who had come in so quietly. Probably just a Lucian archivist.
Another keystroke, and then a loud snap. The bar that locked the row of shelves in place had gone back into the floor.
The safety was disengaged!
Suddenly, the shelves moved, the far shelf crashing into the shelf beside it, and then the shelf beside that.
And where they stood, the shelves began to move together.
Sammy tackled Nellie from behind, knocking her forward from between the rows of files, just as the shelves they’d been between smashed together, sealing row O with a deadly thud. The Nathaniel Hartford file flew from Nellie’s hands and slid across the floor.
Nellie whipped her head around and saw that she was safe, and Sammy, too. When she looked forward again, it was to see a shiny black shoe step on the bright red cover of the file. Nellie met the cold blue eyes of Alek Spasky, a steel spike twirling on the end of his fingers.
“Hello again,” he said. “Doing some light re
ading?”
Athens, Greece
The paparazzi were the first to arrive in front of the small stage on the Acropolis in Athens, but they were quickly followed by the Greek news media, local entertainment bloggers, the international press, and a growing gaggle of Jonah Wizard fans.
The Acropolis was a high hill in the center of Athens, one of the most important ancient ruins in the world, a complex filled with temples to ancient Greek gods and heroes. Above the narrow streets of a quiet neighborhood, the complex commanded glorious views of the city and had once been a place of pilgrimage for ancient Athenians. Its soaring columns and iconic monuments were visible from anywhere in Athens, and at its center stood the large square building of the temple to Athena herself, the Parthenon, with wide stone steps ringing a crumbling colonnade.
In the cleared area in front of the Parthenon, Jonah Wizard stepped on stage to hold his press conference.
“Yo, what’s up, Athens?” He did a RoboGangsta dance move, which set the crowd roaring. Immediately, the press started shouting questions.
“Who are you wearing?”
“Do you think you have fans in space?”
“Will there be a RoboGangsta 2?”
“Yo,” Jonah answered. “RoboGangsta’s a clutch movie and I’m, like, crazy stoked I got to be in it, but my next film is going to be one I’m producing myself.”
The fans cheered, the press pressed.
“Is it an action movie like Quick Exit?” they wanted to know. “Or a hip-hop musical? Will there be a lycanthrope?”
Jonah glanced around the rest of the Acropolis temple complex. Even in ruins, it took his breath away with its grandeur. As the morning sun rose, the scattered stones and broken columns that poked from the grass gave off a gentle pink hue, and the square temple behind him cast its first shadows on the hill. Every stone seemed to stretch and glow as the morning bloomed.
It seemed insulting to the great artists who built this sacred place for him to be holding such an event in front of it. Oh, how Jonah would have loved to tell his fans about the art and poetry of ancient Athens, the cultural flourishing that created the very place where they now cheered for him!
But no one wanted to hear that stuff from Jonah Wizard.
They wanted to hear his catchphrase from RoboGangsta: “Looks like your face needs a remix, skin-bag!”
Down the hill, only a corner of the Olympieion stood. It had once been a great temple to Zeus, but now a mere fifteen colossal columns were all that remained of the original hundred and four. The area around it was roped off, just as the area around the Parthenon where he stood had been roped off, and around four other of the most significant temple ruins in the citadel.
Each roped-off area was the designated launch site for one of the six airships in the Airship X Prize.
Not only would the Acropolis make for striking photographs as the zeppelins took off, it would highlight the lightness of these airships, how they could land anywhere, even among ancient ruins, without damaging a single historic stone.
The silver ovals of the dirigibles floated over the ruins of the temples, held in place by tow lines and attached to metal stairs that led into their passenger gondolas beneath the sleek gas-filled hulls that kept them aloft.
The throngs of visitors and spectators had made it easy for the rest of Jonah’s travel companions to slip out of his limo before he pulled up.
“Tell us about your next movie, Jonah!” the press pleaded with him.
“Right,” Jonah said. “Check it. It’s a story about a mime and the power of the performer to transcend the silence of the modern age.” He felt a swell of pride, about to discuss his true artistic spirit in the very spot where ancient Greeks had once worshipped the goddess of wisdom, inspiration, and the arts, Pallas Athena.
Perhaps this moment was the reason he was meant to be caught up in all the Cahill drama, the moment he got to step out of the shadows of Jonah Wizard, Hip-Hop Star, and become Jonah Wizard, Artist.
“So no werewolf?” a reporter asked. “Just mimes?”
Jonah shook his head and the crowd seemed to sag with disappointment. The paparazzi still snapped pictures, but he saw fans glancing around, whispering to one another, and some of the reporters started to wander off. They didn’t care about some art film about a mime. They wanted news. And they were going to look for it around the other airships!
Jonah felt his phone vibrate twice in his pocket. That was the signal from Ham. He’d gotten on board the Fold N Eat airship safely. Another vibration told him that Ian had boarded the Lucian airship. Two down, three to go. He needed to keep the crowd’s attention focused on him.
“Mimes are dope, yo!” Jonah shouted.
They crowd stared blankly at him.
His pocket vibrated three more times. Cara was on board her airship, owned by an eccentric Mexican wrestling billionaire named Guapo Ramirez. A fourth vibration told him that Amy had made it onto her ship, a cooperative project of MIT graduate students, the most experimental of all the entries in the contest.
The only Cahill who hadn’t signaled he was safely stowed away was Dan.
Jonah glanced at the ruins of the Erechtheion, a smaller temple on the north side of the Acropolis. The temple itself had been dedicated to Athena and to Poseidon, the mighty sea god, also called the Earth Shaker. It seemed a gross insult to his grandeur that beside the ruins of one of his temples, Dan Cahill was trying to sneak onto an airship sponsored by the unfortunately named energy drink Gas Flight Xtreme.
Jonah saw Dan crouched behind one of the six carved stone maidens that held up the porch of the temple. Two of the airship’s crew strolled around the perimeter, looking up at their ship. One of them held a clipboard and studied the hull, while the other looked around. His hands were empty, but on his belt, he had a Taser.
Dan was going to get fried.
Jonah had to win the crowd back, had to get their attention, and had to get the men inspecting Dan’s airship looking his way, too. But what could he do?
“We love you, Jonah!” a group of Greek teenagers shouted up at him. He winked at them. That was it! The press might not care about his art, but his fans cared about him.
“Yo, check it. I wanna get real with y’all,” Jonah said into the mic, lowering his voice like he was about to reveal a secret. Everyone leaned forward. Even the reporters who’d wandered off looked back. “So I’ve been working on my mime moves,” he told the crowd. “And I need your help … to, like, get out of this box!”
He started the cheesiest mime routine he could come up with, moving his hands like he was stuck in an invisible box. He pounded on the sides, squished himself down like the box was shrinking around him, turned himself into a squat mini-Jonah, then waddled around the stage on his knees.
It was a performance worthy of a birthday clown, not the greatest hip-hop star and action hero on the planet.
The crowd burst out laughing, cameras snapped.
Jonah Wizard, superstar, was having some kind of mime meltdown.
Jonah threw his arms in the air and broke the silence with, “Yo, why you laughing? I don’t want to be a hip-hop movie star anymore! I want to be a mime!”
His fans wept. Some fainted. There were shrieks as their hero shred every last bit of cool he’d ever built. Security had to wade into the crowd to prevent a riot.
That was when Dan bolted for the docking tower of the Gas Flight Xtreme, took the steps three at a time, and vanished into the great ship’s underbelly. Moments later, Jonah’s phone buzzed five times. He was in the middle of climbing on an invisible rope.
Dan was secure and Jonah was humiliated. The paparazzi wanted to know when he’d start performing at birthday parties and bar mitzvahs.
Jonah didn’t care. Sometimes saving lives was more important than hip-hop cred.
1,000 feet over Athens (and climbing)
Liftoff!
A loud horn sounded, there was a hiss as the gas expanded in the inflated envelope above the
gondola, tether lines released, and suddenly the Gas Flight Xtreme began its ascent into the clouds.
Dan couldn’t believe his eyes as he crouched beside a storage locker, peering through the bottom of the airship’s passenger gondola. The torpedo-shaped tube was held together by metal bands attached to the metal frame of the oval hull up above, but other than those thick strips of what Dan guessed was ultra-lightweight titanium, the entire floor was made of reinforced glass. Anyone standing on the ground below as they took off would be looking up at the bottom of his shoes. He sure hoped the ground crew didn’t seem him. He was, after all, a stowaway.
Dan looked down past his sneakers, and his stomach did a somersault as the hills of Athens dropped away, smaller and smaller, until the ancient ruins looked like models on a spectacular train set. Amazingly, he didn’t even feel the kind of acceleration that pushed astronauts in movies flat against their seats. He stood up straight, just to see if he could.
This wasn’t flying, it was levitating.
There were a few more loud hisses as the giant bladders inside the metal frame of the balloon filled with the gas mixture, causing the ship to become literally lighter than air and to stay that way as the density of the air changed the higher they got. In about ten minutes, they’d burst through the clouds.
Dan bent down again, pressing his face against the floor so he could take it all in. As he watched, the big, round airship of the Fold N Eat corporation popped through the cloud cover below, and not far from it, the oval of the Galactica Toy Company drifted into the sky, followed by the wing-shaped MIT airship, which burst up though the clouds, shining silver in the sunlight, rising faster than the others. He knew Amy was on board that one and a lump caught in his throat.
He wasn’t up here to admire the view. He was up here to find out if this ship was the Outcast’s target or not. If it was, he was ascending to the edge of space on a ticking time bomb. If it wasn’t, one of the others was riding a bomb into the sky. Like the Outcast said, “Time flies. And so must you.”
Mission Hindenburg Page 5